Stainless Steel
by Taciturn-Rena
Summary: Quidam. Just the aftermath of Zoe's return home. Started off as a drabble, but now I have no idea where I'm going with it. Rated T for now to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I don't claim rights to any of it, and I'm not using it for profit. All characters and what-not belong to Cirque.

Side note - Gringoire's name came out of nowhere. I just kind of used it for the fic because the singer character bears a funny resemblance to Gringoire from Notre Dame de Paris. So, yeah.

chapter 01

There was a tight knot forming in Gringoire's stomach as he sung, watching the scene transpiring from behind the collapsing fence, dimly lit by hung strings of old, mostly stolen lightbulbs. Letting Zoe's final nonsense song—though it had become less unintelligible by then, with a recognizable Cirquish word or phrase here and there—resonate from him, he tried not to focus on the faces of John or Fritz or even Zoe herself. Instead he let his gaze settle on the family. They at least looked cheery enough.

He knew this would've happened sooner or later. The girl wasn't ready—she was too young to leave her family, and still too rooted in her own sort of reality for anything to work. She had to go home. But with his eyes flicking between the parents and Fritz or John despite his utmost discipline, Gringoire caught himself having to somberly admit that he didn't want to see the girl go either.

Not for his own sake. Little Zoe probably still thought him to be a disembodied voice, or maybe the voice of the Quidam himself. They wouldn't exactly be able to miss each other.

The same couldn't be said in John's case. It would be hard for Fritz too, but he'd be back to his old chipper, take-one-for-the-team self within, Gringoire guessed, about two days. Nothing phased the Target all that badly. John...Well, it was rare to see John down, and no one liked it when he was. But it was inevitable now. He'd spent all his energy for a girl who would only be damaged if she stayed in their world, and was only ever grateful to him a few times, before she got distracted again.

Did Gringoire know how that felt? Not particularly. No one really owed him anything, nor had he ever been in love.

Which only begged the question of was John in love? Gringoire quickly shook his head, almost disrupting the flow of his song, to quiet the thought. John had practically raised him. Deep down, John was still the inscrutable father figure to him. John couldn't be in _love_.

He instinctively undid his hair, letting it fall springy and bronze-colored around his face, and straightened his coat, suddenly feeling self-conscious. A twinge of relief hit him as he felt the song drawing to a close, and he relaxed a little to deliver the final notes with gusto. He felt several pairs of eyes on him all at once, and stopped mid-belt to stare wide-eyed back at them, mouth still slightly open.

"...They've already gone back, Gringoire," Alys the violinist finally informed him. Gringoire blinked.

"Oh." He looked around, almost seeking proof. "So they have."

There was a slight murmur through what remained of the crowd that might have been a chuckle in brighter circumstances. Toto rolled his eyes and mimed getting high to the nearest group of girls. The Quidam had long since vanished, and John was nowhere to be seen either. Pierrot finally broke the silence.

"So do we just go back to what we always do?" she demanded, arms crossed.

"Yes. All of you." John had returned at some point, and everyone seemed as surprised by his re-entrance as Gringoire was. He was hunched over slightly and was holding a clipboard. He looked tired.

"Well, that was pointless!" Pierrot made a "hmph" noise and kicked over a coat hanger as she strode off. John caught the structure just before it hit the ground and straightened it gently.

At that point, only John, Fritz, and Gringoire remained in the square. Fritz awkwardly held the rubber ball that he and Zoe had played with, looking at it like he'd forgotten what it was. John still had one arm around the coat hanger and was chastising it good-naturedly in a hushed whisper with such seriousness that one would almost believe that it was listening.

With a small sigh, Gringoire unplugged the speakers nearest him and walked around the fence into the square, fanning himself against the stuffiness of the air with the collar of his coat. He gingerly took the rubber ball from Fritz, and smiled as the Target's morose eyes lit up when he lightly tossed it into the air. Fritz caught it easily, now grinning characteristically once again, and threw it back.

John paused his intense conversation to watch as a game of catch began, the life slowly returning to his face, picked up the coat hanger and an abandoned radio, and turned dramatically on his heel before leaving, humming a Saltimbancan folk song as he flipped through the stations.

As the radio static faded into the streets, Gringoire paused, holding the rubber ball in one hand as he stared into the distance at the steel bridge that had arched grandly over the city ever since its creation.

"He's not going to be the same for a long time, is he?" he said, not really as a question so much as a way to let it sink in. He tossed the ball back, forcing himself not to dwell on the inquiry.

He reluctantly met eyes with Fritz, who was suddenly still, and his hopes of finding a remaining spark of vitality despite the city's losses quickly dispersed. There was that same dull, mournful look in Fritz's countenance that Gringoire hadn't wanted to see, and it lacked even the slight spark that John's retained. Was everyone devastated over Zoe's leave? Marelle's relapse? Isabelle's...?

Gringoire shuddered. He'd never seen anything like what had happened to Isabelle. Or...nothing had _happened_ to her. One night, she'd hung herself in yards of red silk from the bridge that framed the city, and Gringoire had been there. That had been the last moment he'd seen her while the soul was still in her body. He'd watched her writhe and entangle and contort herself, suspended in the fabric, desperate to feel again even if the only emotion she could force on herself anymore was pain. Or adrenaline. All the sharp falls she willfully took, only to catch herself again with enough timing to not break her neck. And repeat. It was a desperate, beautiful, horrible thing to behold, and as it intensified, Gringoire had fled from the scene as though his own life was just as in jeopardy as hers, claiming sanctuary behind another broken building. There he had remained shaking uncontrollably until the silks had been taken down, back pressed to the cold wall for security.

The strange look Fritz was giving him snapped Gringoire out of the memory. The past few days kept sneaking up on him, he realized. Remnants of them still lingered around the atmosphere of the city in the same vein as the bits of red silk no one could manage to unsnare from the bridge.

"You don't..." Gringoire stopped, trying to think clearly. "You don't think Zoe's presence was a figure in all this—" he made a broad gesture around the largely abandoned square, "do you?"

The Target frowned slightly, pursing his lips, and reluctantly shook his head. His expression gained a disapproving look to it and he shook his head again, resolutely this time.

"If you say so." Gringoire put up his hands in truce, finding himself almost laughing. Fritz squinted reproachfully at him for a few seconds more. Apparently placated, he picked up the forgotten rubber ball and took off with it, seeking someone less brooding to play catch with.

_Brooding_. He'd just caught himself using that word as self-description. The absurdity.

_So I'm caught up in all this too, huh? _He ran both hands through his hair, mussing it, and dropped them back to his sides with a loud sigh.

He gave the square one last unfocused once-over and headed towards a hopefully more distracting part of the city, his pace a few steps above a trudge.

It seemed like the whole city was dead for blocks on, though. It hadn't rained in awhile, but the weather in Quidam rarely let up long enough for the city to properly dry, so the streets were more puddle than pavement regardless. The blacktop reflected the strings of lights better than the murky water did, and the occasional faint roll of thunder would sound without accompaniment from lightning. Most of the city's buildings were falling apart from deliberate neglect. Yet the city held a sort of enduring beauty that was as hard to understand as its inhabitants, but much easier to overlook. Even in his slowly deteriorating mood, it was still something Gringoire couldn't help but admire.

There was a clink as something sailed from one alley wall to the other, bouncing off a drainpipe and skittering to a stop at Gringoire's feet. He picked it up—some old bottle cap, the metal kind. He looked around for the source and spotted a sight that made him freeze.

Marelle chucked another trinket of junk with a whiplike swing of her pale arm and, as it hit its mark on the drainpipe, slowly dropped the limb to let it rest on her knee, her wrist turned up as she regarded it as if examining the veins. She was perched, her back against the brick window frame and her knees folded a few inches from her thin chest, on a broken-down air conditioning system. The thickly-styled spikes in her ponytail drooped and the dark circles progressively forming under her eyes were apparent even from a distance. She didn't seem aware anyone else was present in her alley.

Gringoire swallowed a skipped heartbeat's worth of anxiety and made a move to turn back and choose a different route, but some of the dim light caught the blue of his coat before he could. Marelle's head shot up. She flung the last bit of debris at the pipe and nimbly dropped herself from the window. Her shoes clicked as she landed, but stayed silent as she stepped closer, squinting.

"Out late?" she asked with needless suspicion, leaning her shoulder against the brick wall and crossing her arms.

It took Gringoire a second to remember he had a voice to reply with. "So are you," were the words that escaped him before he could really form an answer in his head.

Marelle drew another few paces closer, arms still crossed, until she too stood under the lights. She was very thin; the way her dress hung off her frame wasn't entertaining the illusion of curves either. The shadows cast in the dim light further defined the athleticism in her frame—vagabond or not, she was still unmistakably a handbalancer. Her eyes were gray. Her hair was dark. Even with the slight platform of shoes, she still only just had the height to properly look Gringoire in the eye.

She cocked her head slightly, her weary expression unchanging. "Oh. Singer," she noted. "It's you."

A good portion of the city only knew Gringoire as "Singer."

"My name is Gringoire," he ventured with a small nod.

"You blink a lot," was all she said in reply. She brushed past him, touching shoulders for a split second, and made her way in the opposite direction down the alley.

Gringoire's hand went to that spot on his shoulder, like a delayed attempt at stopping her, and he turned, looking on as she left.

"Go home, Gringoire!" she called, not turning around or breaking her stride, but as she turned the corner, Gringoire swore he heard her quietly humming "Steel Dream."


	2. Chapter 2

chapter 02

The days following Zoe's departure were going to be a task to get through. Gringoire had had a vague sense of that while the family were still bidding the city their farewells, but the next day, he knew it. He woke up knowing it.

The Quidam had left for another realm, maybe to recruit a new human, or maybe for his own business. It was anyone's guess. It didn't make any tangible difference—the city was always left in John's capable hands regardless of the Quidam's presence—but there was a looming apprehension whenever their founder deserted them. Whatever his reasons for leaving, he didn't always return with the city's best intentions in mind. Rumors were starting to spread that he'd only created the city for the betterment of humanity, another species entirely.

"However close the Cirquish and human races actually are, rumors spread through both with equal rampancy," Gringoire recalled a Dralionese noble complaining once during an overheard conversation with John about diplomacy.

Quotes notwithstanding, there was a tension about the city that bordered on chilling. Even with the standard gossip, things had gotten quiet. Relentlessly so. Gringoire had resorted to occupying both his time and his thoughts with jotting down Zoe's songs to eventually arrange, taking some creative licenses on her gibberish lyrics here and there for coherence's sake. Even with his best efforts at time-consuming, he got the feeling he couldn't stretch the task long enough to wait out the city's mourning stages. Facing the aftermath of the past week was becoming inevitable, and Gringoire was starting to realize he was putting more effort into avoiding it than he was in doing anything productive.

He put down his pen and rubbed his eyes. The Quidam needed to find a new hobby. Using the city as a giant family counseling session was taking its toll on his own people. One of them was dead. Another was probably suffering her third bout of withdrawal hallucinations that year.

Oh, Marelle. The city's original junkie, both a collapsing dam of self-sabotage yet still somehow an imperishable wall. She was a magnet, attracting both trouble and intrigue, and heavily addicted to some substance that was forbidden in most of the Western realms. She could suspend herself upside-down on a cane with one arm, yet couldn't seem to pick herself up from even the slightest emotional pitfalls without a crutch.

Gringoire chewed his lower lip slightly as "Steel Dream"—the violinist, Alys, had composed that piece in Marelle's honor—started to faintly play through his head. He picked up his pen and continued his own arrangements. A group of shouting vagabonds breezed past just in the line of his peripheral vision, the smell of smoke and unwashed bodies lingering after them as if to leave a signature. Somewhere across the street, jump ropes slapped pavement and a guitar strummed with the steady thwack-thwack-thwacks of the rope as its clumsy metronome.

With a groan, Gringoire dropped his pen, ignoring as it clattered down the stairs of the fire escape he sat on, and put his head in his hands. Whether he sought distraction or desperately craved a few hours of concentration was becoming indistinguishable, but neither seemed to be working.

_This won't all go away if you just close your eyes_, he reprimanded himself, suppressing frustration. He needed to find a moment to talk to John. He sighed through his teeth, burying his face deeper into his palms.

For a moment he just sat like that, letting the guitar strums and the sound of his own breathing fill and slowly cool his mind, his music abandoned on his lap.

He'd been blaming everything on the family, he realized, like their presence somehow upset the natural order of things. It was only just starting to cross his mind that maybe the city had been that damaged to begin with. Seeing someone else heal at their own expense just dampened the rust.

Gringoire lifted his head and rifled through his pages of lyrics and music with new motivation, though with a contradictory purpose. His eyes found the last verse he'd written down, taking it in—

_You're world is yours, not mine, Quidam..._

—and slowly crumpled them, releasing the breath he'd been reluctant to let leave him. The air rejuvenated him, and he finally, gently, tore the papers until they amounted to little more than flakes. He stood and threw them to the arms of the wind, and watched them drift lower and lower until they brushed along the sidewalk, resembling one of the clusters of faceless Chiennes Blanches that would shuffle along the currents tread by other urbanites.

With a newfound life in him, he descended the fire escape, overcoat swishing, and swiftly made his way across the street. Grinning for the first time in days, he burst into brassy, improvised song to accompany Olaf's guitar, and swore the pulse of the skipping ropes quickened a few beats.


	3. Chapter 3

Stainless Steel – Chapter III

Rue D'Auseil

Quidam was actually an old abandoned Nouvellian city, once. That is, it hadn't been remotely Nouvellian for a long time; nothing was Nouvellian anymore. And history said it had been vibrant once, too. Not the enduring, battered, melancholy vibrancy its people knew now; there was an alleged time when the city had been young, and knew such a thing as untarnished hope, without jadedness or grief to rise above. Then Nouvelle, like many Solar realms did, fell to newer realms, and the city was stripped of things like colors and lights and hope, but its people were left behind until the Quidam came to breathe life back into the streets and condemned buildings.

The Quisque, as the urbanites were called, were very much like the lights that had been strung up like Terran ceremonial decorations or power lines throughout the city, a makeshift attempt at restoring light, that happened to be beautiful when it wasn't their purpose. Most of them were cracked or blemished, some barely glowed at all. They'd been found, gods know in how many corners and gutters, and determination had made them into something. And though to someone of a younger, brighter realm they seemed shoddy, they meant more to the city than anyone had probably ever guessed.

Gringoire was a more recent addition to the lineup of Quisque citizens, and he never managed to think of himself as all that broken or rescued. He'd just grown up in John's care, not aware of or all that concerned about where he'd come from, and filled the abandoned niche left by another of his trade, the first bard of Quidam who left the city for, rumor had it, a Varek tribe. The city, or any other city, had not and would never be home to him. And Gringoire couldn't bear to imagine himself anywhere else.

But three days, and John was still making himself elusive. And there remained no sign that the Quidam had returned. The uneasiness that had started to gather was now condensing.

Les Égarés were passing through a side of the city unusual for them. Under nearly all circumstances, they lingered around the square or the older, more dilapidated districts, only places that were either small ghost-streets or overcrowded fountains of fiasco. This was a quieter, more well-maintained area—it was a home to mostly the musicians and a few of the younger urbanites.

Gringoire caught the eye of one of their ladies—impish and vindictive as they were, they still warranted that name—and quickly mouthed a question: _Have you seen John?_

She tilted her chin downward and her expressionless face grew chilling upon eye contact. Were they violet? Red? No one ever thought about Les Égarés having colors of their own. It didn't seem right. Gringoire found himself staring.

The girl shook her head. Another came up behind her and cuffed her in the ear. The two glared at each other, dead silent, before the second shoved the first back into the clustered rest of the group and pointed Gringoire to a doorway. One of her male companions grabbed her outstretched arm and dragged her along with them like a doll, back where she was clearly supposed to be in all their opinions. As they drew farther away, Les Égarés didn't seem to leave so much as slowly blend into the walls around them before they lost visibility altogether.

As the last trace of them became indistinguishable from what was already there, Gringoire shifted his attention to the doorway the girl had indicated. He'd seen it before. Marelle had been spotted stumbling in and out of it a few times, Boum-Boum had left an article of clothing or shoebox of whatever on the doorstep before. The first Quisque troupe of musicians had once lived out of one room on the second story.

None of the new musicians had ever seen the interior of that suite.

Gringoire twisted the rusting door handle, first tentatively and then with more force. Frustrated, he battered his shoulder against it once, then twice, still twisting the handle, before it creaked laboriously open enough for him to squeeze through. He was met with a cloud of dust and the scratchy audio from an Alegrian anthem everyone in the western Sol had gotten sick of, and received a tiredly amused look from John himself.

"That door is easier to open when you kick it. The stop gets stuck on the floorboards." He moved past Gringoire to hook his foot on the edge of the door, pull it mostly closed, and step back quickly enough to let it shut on its own. The cloud of dust the motion stirred up reflected a small ray of sunlight coming through one of the boarded-up windows. Gringoire sneezed. John went back to the chaotic work station he had set up, stacks of rain-damaged old books pushed together to make a short desk, and a couple papers set up on cobwebbed music stands. He'd taken off his shoes and appeared to be using them as paperweights.

"John, I have a few questions…" Gringoire's tone didn't conclude the sentence; he'd entirely forgotten what those questions were.

The city's caretaker looked up, one eyebrow raised parentally. "Do you, or did you just seek me out to make sure I hadn't left?"

"No, I—John, where's the Quidam?" Gringoire blurted.

For a moment, John's face echoed the grave aura he'd adopted shortly after Zoe's leave.

"The Quidam had some business to settle in what remains of the kingdom of Alegria," he finally answered. The two exchanged glances. "You witnessed Isabelle's death, didn't you? I heard you sing for her."

Gringoire bit his lip, shutting memory of the song and the images with it out of his mind. "Yes. Fritz was there too."

"Did Zoe see it?"

"Maybe…a few seconds?" There was concern in John's eyes. "I don't know if she understood what was happening."

John sighed. "Maybe it was for the best that she did." He reached over and pressed a button on the radio. The silence was abrupt. "That song makes me gag," he said, humor suddenly back in his voice. Gringoire forced a small laugh, distracted.

A series of quick, small thuds resonated from behind a door until the door slammed open and a tired, sweaty Marelle emerged from it, her set of canes under her arm and her blue dress hung over her shoulders like a towel. She was clad in gray, midriff-baring handbalancing-wear. Gringoire's attention went to the tattoo on her thigh—was it card symbols? Interlinked stars? A tribal design?

Marelle snapped her fingers at him, her hand at the level of her face, and he met her gaze apologetically. She rolled her eyes.

"I feel better, John."

She looked better. The needle bruises on her arm were fading and some color had returned to ease the pallor in her complexion. The frailness Gringoire had seen in her the other night was nearly gone.

John gave her an encouraging grin and replied, "About time!"

Marelle smiled with quiet accomplishment. "This isn't over," she said, almost like a reminder to herself. She turned, shoulders squared, and offhandedly acknowledged Gringoire with "Singer" as she left the building. Both he and John watched the door for a second, expressions mixed.

"If we can get Marelle back on her feet…" John trailed off and began flipping through radio stations again.

Gringoire lingered, a question still in his head that he couldn't identify. John found an appropriate station—something Gringoire didn't recognize—and returned his attention to him.

"Many of us are starting to think of the Quidam as intangible," he said. "That isn't the least bit true." He let the music play uninterrupted for a moment, as if allowing it to have its say. Gringoire waited for him to continue.

"All I'm going to say is that I don't think Isabelle's suicide left a stronger impact on anyone than him."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

Gringoire hadn't gotten any specification, any further hints, from John after that, but he had the unsettling feeling that he usually got when John said something that seemed vaguely directly at him. So he paced the room for a few minutes, hands shoved in his pockets and humming "Rivage." John nonchalantly wadded up a paper, dabbed some glue onto it, and flung it at the wall. It stuck. He grinned victoriously, and Gringoire finally had to accept the caretaker's iron will.

"See you around, John," he said with a quick wave, tugging the door open.

"Of course," John answered amiably, and aimed a dart at the suspended piece of paper. Gringoire gleefully put a sound effect to it—_"Ska-reewwwwwwwrrrrrr!"_ John spun around.

"Scram, you!"

"Good afternoon, John!" Gringoire mock-saluted, chuckling, and stepped back into the daylight.

At the sight of the building's exterior, Gringoire realized he wasn't any more at ease than he had been when he'd walked in. Or, at least, that he was still confused. His brief flash of good spirits dampened like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on them.

_Maybe Fritz will know something_, he speculated, raking his hair away from his face to let it spring stubbornly back into its preferred place. The Target had witnessed Isabelle's death with him after all—in a birdcage, granted—and he tended to perceive things from angles overlooked by most. Gringoire made his way in the direction of the square, deciding against trying to track down someone else immediately after finding the first. What was he doing dwelling on the whole thing anyway?

He just wanted to fix things. That kind of thing was always John's job, though, but John didn't seem to be up to it this time. Something had really changed in him, and Gringoire didn't know what to make of it. It seemed more and more like John had put a piece of his soul in those old white shoes he'd stolen, and when the family had left, that piece had never been returned to its owner.

Humans. They always shook things up. There were so many stories of how some awkward soul overturned a whole realm, brought there for being disillusioned or out-of-place in their own world. The creative spirit of the Cirquish was never fully realized in humankind, even when it had the potential to be. Too much logic, too much judgment.

_They need us_, John had once told Gringoire when he was young. It wasn't until then that he'd really even begun to understand them. Zoe had been so dead-eyed and timid when she first came to Quidam, it made even Gringoire see some reason for all the madness.

Another presence in the street snapped Gringoire out of his abstraction. The brown-suited, musician-mocking clown himself, pacing and grumbling over some recent injustice.

"Charlie Chaplin!" Toto flung his hat to the ground and began vengefully chomping on the stem of a rose, scowling so hard that the creases in his forehead and nose practically merged.

"You're going to have to translate that," Gringoire said gently. He stood a few feet from the bench Toto had plopped onto a few seconds before to pout more effectively.

"Film, Gringoire. Silent, artsy film about _rejection_." Toto gnashed his teeth, snipping the end of the rose off. He spat it out and watched it sail a good three or four feet to become miniature driftwood in a puddle.

Gringoire restrained himself from shaking his head and sat next to Toto, expecting the filmmaker to scoot over. Toto clearly didn't take the hint, and Gringoire realized he'd just sentenced himself to enduring a bony shoulder digging into his arm.

"She didn't even show me her _film reels_!" Toto yelled into the wind, making frantic cupping gestures with his hands. "Can you believe it?"

Gringoire adjusted his coat uncomfortably.

"And she was blonde, too! I thought for sure." Toto sighed, and sunk back into the bench. "You know you're like an armchair?" he added, poking Gringoire's shoulder inquisitively.

"You—!"Gringoire instinctively swatted at Toto's hand. "Quit that. You should really stop trying to pick up Terran girls. How do you even get them here anyway?"

"I'm a clown. I can do anything." Toto hooked a thumb under his jacket collar as a substitute for suspenders, looking smug.

Gringoire raised an eyebrow. "The Quidam is fine with you whisking human girls away and testing their sanity? I don't think so." He laughed quietly, but he felt melancholy trickle into the sound. "That's his job, after all."

Toto snorted. "I don't think you heard me, my singing slow-witted armchair-colleague." His ironic formality earned a sharp, distinctively John-esque glare from Gringoire, but the clown ignored it. "I said I'm a clown. We don't exactly operate on the same rules as, say, you or the jump-ropers or Les Égarés."

"And what does that mean?" Gringoire asked, dropping his annoyance for an almost ingenuous curiosity. Toto met his intrigue with a complacent smirk.

"If I explain it to you, it's not funny anymore. And what the hell am I supposed to do with my life then?"


End file.
